How much of that $60.5 million did you receive last month? Yes, the top sellers make more while cutting our balls off and removing any chance to make revenue.

I love how the argument is that if they didn’t have to pay out so many punitive fees they could “introduce” more opportunities for all of us to make more money and have more choices for the consumer. So you’re telling me you can’t afford to introduce those so called “opportunities” with what you’re (Pandora) is making already.

Since any person out there can now just open up their Pandora or Spotify app, plug into their car stereo and listen to almost any song they want to for nothing, literally not a penny of cost to the listener, the entire model of making money from record sales for the industry of music has completely taken a dive and it seems that no one wants to admit that payouts for streaming are so small that they really make up pretty much no portion of our income as labels, artists and songwriters. I am in Nashville as we speak and have been meeting with different friends of mine to discuss my own future prospects and I’ve been doing some thinking and came up with an idea.

I’ve been a country singer and songwriter for over 10 yrs now and I’ve sold over 10,000 albums and well over 10,000 singles, so coming to the conclusion that giving away my music has been extremely hard for me as I know it’s hard for the labels and artists selling 100,000. But those guys are now even more few and far between than ever. I can tell you after meeting with the publishers, labels and managers over the course of the last couple of days it has become very apparent to me that we as an industry have no choice but to create a new model for a revenue stream to take the place of the lack of sales that are now happening due to the public’s opportunity to just stream and get music legally for free. As an artist, publisher and label owner I acquire all of the pieces of the pie when it comes to the revenue stream created from my music. But there are songwriters who don’t perform or record and release their own music. They require someone like me to record the song, release it on an album and bring it to radio and begin the process of making their money that way. Well, if you give away the music, it pretty much kills most of the revenue stream opportunity for the songwriter and for the label.

What I suggest as a solution:

Step 1…Live Performance Royalties
In Europe and other countries around the world, when you hear a song live at a concert or in a pub, the artist and venue are required to submit a setlist to the PRO (performing rights organization) for payouts to the copyright owners of those songs. Obviously, this is beginning to happen here in the US and will continually become more prevalent as less and less music is actually purchased.

Step 2…Physical Sales/Giveaways of CD’s
I would like to test the theory of offering my fans a FREE copy of my brand new unreleased EP “Dealing With The Man” only asking them to come to a show and pay a cover charge or ticket price. I, as the artist, will have to negotiate a portion of the ticket sales to paying for the duplication costs and the publishing fees associated with my co-writers and their publishers. I won’t disclose the actual costs but can say that it’s very possible to do and everyone involved will be able to profit from their hard work and the fans will also enjoy the idea of getting music for free.

Step 3…Digital Sales/Giveaways of Singles
The only way to see any solution in offering free downloading to my fans who aren’t able to come and see me LIVE, yet still paying the publishers and myself as the label, is to ask for a donation with a minimum amount of .10 cents to cover the publishing royalties and just taking a risk on my part as the label and hoping that fans will be generous enough to offer up some sort of donation to cover my recording costs. This is the only way I can see a possibility for all the parties involved to still be able to survive in these times of free streaming.

My theory is that I would rather give away 100,000 copies of this new EP than sell 10,000. More fans listening to my music means that more fans will show up at my shows and my ticket sales will go up and in essence my revenue will go up.

It’s just a theory but it sure does seem like it might work. I’ve printed 1,000 copies of this unreleased EP and I’m ready to try it.